∿∿∿
Solid Line held Signal before her on a low aspen table. Nopony was checking on the translucent map of Metropolis anymore. Nonetheless, Solid had been keeping the image, as nopony told her that it could be shut down, and a static picture required only a trace amount of concentration anyway.
Plum brought Solid Line a cookie jar with sour sauce and smiled, “Black-aligned often like that taste. Do you feel left out? I have been to several weddings, and if you are not organizing, or not among close friends of the pair... it may seem that you have been invited for no real reason. For me, you are a wonderful pony and I'm glad to see you!"
“Thank you for the compliment, and this is not a wedding yet,” Solid smiled. The fact that Cursory has chosen Gentle instead of herself hurt a little but she said nothing about it. Solid’s previous state did not allow her to speak about these matters anyway, and now it was too late.
This was also a part of life.
Signal quietly snorted, and, being Fluttershy, Solid Line understood her, "We won't leave you alone either."
Plum stood for a bit beside her, and Solid asked, “Tell me please, have you ever lived here?" she highlighted one of the marks on the map — a colorless outline of an earth pony on the very shore of the ocean. Points of assistance, or lost shards, or both, quoting Gentle Touch.
Plum peered and nodded, “Not for long. Here I stepped out of unbound age. Good ponies live there. They never doubted that I don't want to even write home, and helped me on my run further…"
Solid nodded, "When was that? By the way, as far as you heard while you were there— is there really something like— you know, a dead alicorn below the waves, something like that?"
"A little more than a luster ago? Less than two,” Plum smiled in response, unsure, "Whether she is or she is not" Plum looked at Solid, her eyes full of darkness for a beat, "Well, it depends on how you look and whom you ask."
“You mean, not even a third of a round since you became an adult? How have you even befriended these two already? Have you stepped beyond the mirror for that too?” Solid tried to joke, and PlumJam smiled back. Come to think of it, Plum Jam was now considerably more aged than her friends, being late young — but that could be a mirror's mark.
Plum Jam nodded, “Yes. That was recent. Dartline helped me in my first cycles, and then I learned where she resides and moved along.”
Solid Line looked up at the sky, overlaid by a tangle of maple branches. Black Moon’s ultraviolet outline was clearly visible at Her zenith, growing in glory.
"So you were there about the same time Gentle was given this map," Solid said to herself. She lit a blinking arrow above the center of the table, waited for the ponies to turn around, and quietly addressed the team, “We don't have to worry whether the Moons object to our campaign or not. Black Moon watched Plum Jam — not her habitat, but the pony herself — to the precise point of her being. I mean, she lived here by the ocean when she got out of her unbound age — but unbounds usually move, so she was not there before, or at least it is unlikely she was staying there as an unbound. And then she moved after Dartline, so she was gone after that too, you see? It seems that it was not too hard to find who does carry shadows. It was necessary that we would find each other ourselves and by our own free will, having the intention to make a team. We were free to make our own choice. I have no doubt that Black Moon is still looking at us. If She were against our campaign, we would have learned that by now."
Gentle shook her head. “Maybe She is looking at you, but the Red has shrouded us."
Solid looked at her, startled, "What do you mean?"
"What I have said," Gentle shrugged. "From the Moons' point of view, we are several clusters of life, not ponies, and not even higher beasts, just something that moves. The Red believed that the Moons would be against our new mission, so it took care of this."
Solid Line chuckled; Signal jabbed her with a paw and meowed briefly, “Don't worry, I can hide you from Their sight too,” Solid realized, and whispered back “No.”
"And you didn't say it earlier? None of you—" just in case, Solid Line asked. It was logical for the Red, but it broke the whole sequence of reasoning, and… I matter so little that they withheld the truth from me? How can I calculate your situations when you are so—
She did not have time to think it through. Dartline was the first to mumble "Sorry," Gentle was the second; and it helped. Solid found herself able to think about things of higher priority yet again.
“I think we need to open up to the Moons,” Solid continued after a pause and a spoonful of raspberry jam, "The Red is lying, and we don't even know if it is forced to lie or if it does that on its own volition. Cursory, tell me why you called us to your house? Not just to hug Gentle in front of us?"
The pegasus blushed, the ponies looked at each other, and Solid noted that she understood this emotion well — they were embarrassed by her rudeness. She was still alive, and her heart was beating fast. Life remained a thing she was completely unaccustomed to, mostly pleasant but frightening. Blacklight threw an apple in her direction, and Solid caught it with magic on the fly.
Gentle commented, "These last words would be better left unsaid, it turned out rather rude, companion. I'm not offended, but in the future, mind your distance."
Cursory replied, still blushing, and she was attracting no less attention than at first sight in Black Moon's tower, "First of all, yes, I wanted to make a statement about us as a pair — we could very well have no time for this later, and I would regret it. We can visit your home too! I'm not the only one here who has a friend to visit before leaving, am I?” She looked around the table. Gentle Touch nodded slightly in response but was deeply frowned “Then, to know you all better in the meantime. Third, I wanted to get off the hook. Even if we spend a little extra time, we are not doing what the Red planned right now, and even threatened by it, I will not—”
“That’s my life you’re playing with!—” Gentle Touch exclaimed, quiet and angry.
Solid Line interrupted them both in that beat before shout-out could have a chance to be born “That is, we do not trust the Red recklessly. And what it demands will affect our Moons — nopony wants to argue with that?”
She waited for an answer. Plum added, her smile open and with no trace of strain, “Maybe it’ll work for the better!”
Formally, she was right. Nevertheless...
“Even in this case, we must warn Them in advance! The Moons believed that— what they did to Sunset was for the best. Let us not ‘believe’, but ‘know’ we did the best. We can't trust our message to the mail — but I have an idea. If it works, we will bring the message to Storm too — as it is, we just abandoned her. For all we know, she might be still waiting for us at the vault.”
Dartline replied, “I’m out. I'll be back when you're done” and two beats later, she was no longer in the maple gazebo. The ponies watched her fly away.
There were no more objections. Solid Line rewrote the message many times, achieving a precise sigil, which, upon perception, will unfold into a sufficiently suitable chain of symbols cognizable for anypony who has a language that in turn tells about the whole story — mirrors, unreal worlds, love and betrayal, a lost fragment, the mission of those who were looking for understanding, but found an opportunity instead, help, hope and distrust—
Cursory, frightened and disheveled, became a test perceiver: she confirmed, rejected and often asked to remove the unnecessary parts of the story but, for all her fear, she was exactly the pony that was up to the task; when options reached the third nine, and Solid Line was still not ready to call the sign done, Cursory was about to give up, but found more inner strength and did not back down, despite each new sigil leaving a new mark in her mind and memory. Gentle did not intervene, only suggested that all requests for assessment or advice be removed from the sign. Blacklight watched with great curiosity, but she clearly lacked the knowledge to make her opinion useful.
Then they ascended high into the sky — Solid Line on Cursory's back - and at the top of the ascent, just below the Net, having warned Cursory about the plan, Solid performed a jaunt even higher and added a square nine of throws directly up from there. In the hazy starry darkness there was practically nothing that remained for her lungs to be filled, and gravity caught her body in the same beat but in the void there were no unwanted eyes that could see and distinguish the symbol; ‘unwanted’ were, in this case, everypony except the Moons.
She reached for her Moon, and sent the newly born sigil flying, along with a request to pass it on to others.
She had enough stamina for seven repetitions of the symbol before she had to breathe — and suffocate. She fell long enough — including the fall through distorted space and time stretched and doubled over as far as she could — so that Cursory had time to align with her and help with a soft landing.
Spent and panting, she lay on fallen leaves, and waited for an answer — anger or blessing — from the vastness of the starry skies, as, according to their stories, her friends had recently waited too.
Like them, Solid Line got no sign in return to her sigil.
Plum approached her and said softly, “The fact that we met — we, all together, when you fell exactly where we gathered for a picnic — it is already a miracle. Then, our gathering because the Moons changed their course to appear — all of them — three of them above the horizon. So don't worry. We're not doing anything unacceptable, sweetie. Trust me. Maybe we’re doing something unadvised, but then we have our right to choose for ourselves. Don't be nervous and don't be afraid, okay? Please. I feel uncomfortable when you are afraid.”
Solid nodded, and Gentle, coming up from the other side, added, “Yes, something like that. For the same reason we will not wait for the Moons to say that we are good ponies who would not be hurt. Black Moon once promised: we can perish on the way, and it is impolite to ask for Her to take that back.”
They got to a store and stocked up on supplies for the long journey to the ocean — even on the fastest aviette, it would still take more than two cycles — when a store worker approached them, “Reputable Cursory Streak, a Herald? You've got a message. This is probably some kind of joke, but— I will lead you to the point. Please, this is important.”
They followed him; Gentle said in a whisper, “He is afraid and believes neither us nor himself, but thinks that the alternative would be even worse.”
The projection panel gleamed green and silver among the distant shelving; the air was dry and lifelessly sour. From the projection, Purity, a false alicorn, more white than White Moon Herself, was staring at the squad.
“We received your message and were able to analyze it, change its form and forget it. Of all Moons' weapons, this one is the most annoying. I had a hard time clearing our operators' minds of this message. You are going against inevitability.” Purity said.
Cursory nodded, "And we'll find a workaround," she said, “Or we will break through the inevitability.”
"It serves our purpose," Purity nodded. “We will provide underwater transport and specialists in working with the ontological shield, which will protect you for a sufficient time from the wrath of the Moons when the Moons decide to undo your deeds — and even you. Enough for you to dive again. Then we will take you to our place and provide you with work in accordance with your talents and skills.”
“But why?” Gentle asked. "Storm mentioned that your troops were cleaning out the cults of Red. Why did you decide to help the Red this time? And why would the Moons destroy us?”
Purity did not answer immediately, narrowing her dark orange eyes; the store worker tried to quietly disappear, but Cursory asked him to stay and remember.
“Under current circumstances, this temporary union is beneficial to us. Each mission to clean up the spawns of the Red carries a mounting risk of personnel loss, or loss of irreproducible equipment, or, worse, accidental transferring of this equipment to wrong ponies. In addition, the Moons need you only as bearers of a miracle — while on your way you will exhaust this miracle. You will become useless. If you continue to live after that, it is only out of Their kindness. Do you accept the offer?” Purity asked.
Cursory examined the team — Plum shook her head quickly and desperately, but lowered her gaze when Cursory looked at her for a beat longer. Solid realized that she didn’t know how to answer, and whether it was worth answering.
“Gentle? Is she generally positive?” Solid Line asked in a whisper.
Meanwhile Signal meowed in her ear, “Be careful. Be extremely careful. Everything is very bad with this proposal, but we can win if we do not lose our own track."
Gentle replied a little irritated, “I don’t know, I can’t see through the screen… and even if I did, she is an alicorn in all ways but one!”
“We are in doubt,” Cursory said to the projection. “How do we know that you yourself will not betray us?”
“My ponies will go without defenses or weapons.“ Purity’s eyes did not stray away.
“And one of them will be Storm,” Cursory replied.
Purity nodded, “Good. Move your Black-aligned forward and receive coordinates.”